Appointed by Fine Foods International

Fantastic news. In October we were appointed by one of the UK’s leading coffee companies to develop a creative rationale, website and online activity for their leading own-label Fairtrade coffee.

Stocked by major supermarkets Tesco’s, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, our brief is to revitalise the brand following a recent redesign of its packaging. A lack of huge budgets has prevented our client from going head to head with the coffee majors so our aim is to target niche users, who care about the provenance, taste and value of the products they buy.

Fair Instant benefits from a unique relationship with Save the Children, donating over £500k from sales over the past few years.

Creative won’t break until February 2012 but we will be keeping you posted here with our developments.

And should you need a quality instant coffee in the meanwhile, don’t forget to buy Fair Instant Gold or Granules. For every pack sold 20p goes direct to Save the Children to help improve the welfare of children living in coffee growing areas of South America.

Viral marketing

Is it every marketers dream to create an ad campaign that goes viral, where the circulation ends up in millions, far surpassing any budget they may have been able to afford?

I know as a creative marketer I would love to put my name behind a hugely successful campaign but it’s not for the faint hearted. For every campaign that succeeds there are probably many more that don’t even reach the consciousness.

What makes a campaign go viral? Ask yourself what makes you happy to forward a link to a friend that they will appreciate receiving and not view you as a pain (certainly NOT the chain messages promising undying love and long life.)

Humour is often the key. It works for me but what one person views as funny another can easily take as offensive. And the big question is whether humour will work for your brand?

Try this link and see if it brightens up your day. It doesn’t sell anything, other than the brilliant skills of the designers, but it made me laugh. drawastickman.com. And if you like it, why not brighten up someone else’s day and forward it to them.

If that doesn’t work, then you can tell my sense of humour at 10mg. It’s probably best not to view this when the boss is around…

Is Direct Mail Dead?

The volume of mail sent in the UK has been reducing at a rapidly accelerating rate over recent years, from 21.5 billion items in 2007/08, to 18.8 billion in 2009/10*.

And it’s easy to see why; direct mail is time-consuming and costly to produce, let alone to post. Add to that the reduction in Royal Mail collections and deliveries and you can see why many companies have turned to the internet as a cost-effective way of reaching out to customers.

Why spend thousands printing brochures that cost even more to post, when customers can just look things up on the internet – and virtually for free.

So is it time to knoll the death bell for direct mail?

The answer is a surprising but resounding no and it’s a fact that many businesses need to sit up and take note of.

Direct mail is learning to adapt and change in the face of new media competition. Gone are the vast and uninspiring bulk mailings of the ’80 and ‘90s and in its place are highly personalised, higher value, targeted mailings.

As a medium to convey complex or emotive messages that reinforce your brand values,  direct mail is still second to none. Mail can be consumed at your own time and place. It can be touched, even smelt and formats can involve and motivate prospects. Carefully targeted and crafted mail packs are delivering surprisingly high response rates, not just the 1-2% expected of many years ago.

Direct mail gives smaller brands the chance to talk to their customers without the need for extensive advertising budgets. Used as part of an integrated campaign, direct mail provides the tangible, physical contact with your prospects that really makes your business stand out from the crowd.

Leading marketing services agency WPP recently reported revenue increases of 12.2% to £2.2bn in the three months to 30 September 2010, with traditional media driving the fastest growth.

The question for businesses now is whether they have adapted their thinking on direct mail?  Have you written out DM from your marketing budget or is it time to reconsider?

It is well known that brands that maintain marketing budgets during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can benefit from improved market share and return on investment during good economic times.

So next time you are planning your marketing budgets, don’t write off direct mail but take time to reconsider how it can be used within your marketing mix to build relations with your customers, to make them value you above the competition.

And if you are in any doubt of whether the returns will work for you, talk to us now…

* Postcomm, Annual Report and Financial Statement, 2009-10, HC 148, 15 July 2010, p 20

Why i can never really love iTunes.

iTunes is a wonderful thing and I have my own inexhaustible collection of songs sitting on my iphone library ready for me to shuffle through at a moment’s notice. But the truth is I never do.

Although iTunes has revolutionized the music industry it’s also destroyed a part of it. When I download my, first and only album, from iTunes I felt an immense sense of sadness. Yes, I could find the album I wanted with ease and there was plenty for me to chose from.... but where was the fun?

Was it like visiting the Notting Hill Record and Tape Exchange, where I would spend hours with friends on a Saturday afternoon, flicking through album cover after album cover discovering the occasional golden gem? No it wasn’t.

I missed picking up those album covers, reading the credits and then wondering who designed this wonderful piece of inventive art.

It’s where I discovered Peter Blake, George Hardie and Hipgnosis. They produced the designs that inspired and excited me and helped me to develop an interest in design.

It’s why I’ll never really love iTunes, because it will never replicate the enjoyment of exploring and experiencing music in such a social and inspirational way.

But hey who know what the future holds.

Alexa Ranking

Alexa is a well known web information company that helps provide a good guide to a website's rankings. At present Little Yellow Duck has a ranking of 3,421,812



The figure given represents the approximate number of web sites in the world that have the popularity higher than the given site. It is expressed in relatively big numbers (the smaller the better). 



Alexa ranking is computed and unlike Google rank, it directly reflects the popularity and does not officially depend on links from other sites, directory inclusion, duplicate content and so on.

For the purpose of this project we will be using it alongside Google Rank. Little Yellow Duck has a Google ranking of 1 out of 10.



Alexa ranks sites based on tracking information of users of its Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and from integrated sidebars in Firefox and Chrome. Hence the page is only ranked between users who have these sidebars installed and may be biased if a specific audience is reluctant to do this (Windows Defender has classified the sidebar as a trojan, a form of malware.. Also, the rank is based on three month data and takes a long time to reflect changes in content that may happen after the domain has been sold. 



Whilst there is some controversy over how representative Alexa's user base is of typical Internet behavior, it is a relatively clearly defined (number of sites more popular than your site), when other ranking systems (like Google rank) are much more complex, not fully public and the "official" value may be very different from the actual value.



However we are going to use both systems to see how we get on.

Happy Birthday Bill Bernbach

“Logic and over-analysis can immobilize and sterilize an idea. It’s like love—the more you analyze it, the faster it disappears”.

Famed for his soundbites, as well as his creative brilliance, Bill Bernbach was one of the original advertising greats. Beginning his career as a copywriter, before founding Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1949, his work (and his soundbites) are as relevant today as they were fifty years ago.

So why is someone who’s been dead for thirty years relevant today? It’s simple, Bernbach believed in the value of the ‘message’.

In a world fragmented with varying media platforms, from the traditional to the social, we’ve forgotten the power of a message.  A message that delivers an idea, not swamped by metrics and science, but one that delivers using simplicity and wit to engage with consumers.

It’s something Bernbach never forgot and on the 100th anniversary of his birth, his work is as relevant today, as it will be tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Bill

Desperados experience

How often do you ever see anything new in social media. Something that pushes the boundaries just a little bit and demonstrates a communication channels true possibilities?

The Desperados experience not only pushes the boundaries, it offers a real breakthrough on YouTube

Have a look at youtube.com/desperados

Non Traditional Portfolios

There are a lot of tedious things in life and top of the list has to be the traditional agency portfolio.

You know the sort of thing '.... a team of committed and experienced professional, dedicated to the highest standards of creativity...' and so it drones on and on.

When we attempted to show that charm, assurance and a little wit would stand out from the crush of pompous agency philosophies that live out their short lives from drawing board to landfill, we were enormously pleased that Rockport Publishing decided to feature our work in Design Matters | Portfolios 01.

So if you'd like to see what all the fuss was about, why not send us an email with your address details and we'll send you a free copy of the book.